Vatican football tournament ends in an unholy row

Redemptoris Mater football team players, wearing yellow and blue, challenge for the ball with Pontificia Universita' Lateranense players during the final of Clericus Cup tournament, at the St.Peter's parish recreation sports center in Rome. Photograph: Alessandra Tarantino/AP

It was an event you might have hoped would inject a bit of spirituality back into the beautiful game, a football tournament for priests and seminarians played out in the shadow of St Peter's Basilica.

But passions run high, even under a dog collar, and when the referee whistled for a penalty in the second half of the Clericus cup final, tempers boiled over. Students from the Pontifical Lateran University squared up angrily to the hapless official, insisting that the Costa Rican striker for Redemptoris Mater college had dived in the box, and while the language was not as purple as it can be in the premiership, words were had.

"You couldn't even ref a game back in the parish," one Lateran player reportedly hissed at the match official as protests continued after the final whistle.

The incident prompted a flurry of blue cards, invented for the tournament and used to dispatch players to a temporary "sin bin".

"Priestly footballers? Worse than Materazzi," said daily La Stampa, referring to Italian player Marco Materazzi, whose taunting of France's Zinédine Zidane in the World Cup final earned him a headbutt.

Lateran university's rector, Bishop Rino Fisichella, admitted: "These are children of our times." But he agreed the penalty was "dubious".

The spot kick handed victory to Redemptoris Mater college, and at the final whistle the triumphant players ran to salute their hundreds of fans, some of whom had chanted in Latin during the game, before covering each other in champagne.

Coach Simone Biondi, who had claimed his side would be "the Vatican's Milan", was helped by the presence of a student priest formerly on the youth team at Serie A club Chievo Verona.

One sports correspondent watching the action said the protests were down to the large number of Italian players on the field. "It was just like any Sunday in Serie A," he said, "although with no swearing."